”Dancing” recap: Injured player

We can all probably agree that this isn’t the best season of Dancing With the Stars ever. Every time Tom shouts out a superlative at the beginning of the show — this week: ”the most competitive cast ever!” — you just have to laugh. It’s a show that’s so reliably crazy — even if nothing exciting happens — that its eventual midseason plateau of mediocrity isn’t even annoying because it’s just so familiar.

Season 6, week 7, and things were just as they’ve always been. Samantha opened the show by explaining that since the contestants must perform a Latin and a ballroom dance, they each had ”twice the chance to falter.” (I cracked up, rewound, and repeated. Thrice.) DANCMSTR quipped that sitting near Bruno is like being in a ”home for the bewildered,” and all of us at home are thinking, Is that not your permanent address? A new word, ”rumbango,” was coined and immediately forgotten. One contestant said, when asked about her prosthetic butt, ”I have fake everywhere.” Because of course she does, and why wouldn’t she be wearing a prosthetic butt? She is a Star, after all.

If there’s one trend in season 6, it’s injuries — the kind that at first seem debilitating but turn out to be minor. At least let’s hope that’s the case with poor Cristián’s arm, which cramped up in the middle of his samba with Cheryl, causing him to drop her on the ground like a ton of tiered, ruffled feathers, and even prompted its own commercial break. We’ll find out if the great Chilean sea bass of a man is still danceable at tonight’s elimination show; in the meantime, here’s how the final six fared with their double dances. (Or, if I were a DWTS writer scripting lines for Samantha, ”Here’s a recap of how these six losers almost choked.”)

Jason Taylor and Edyta: 55 out of a possible 60 points This was a huge comeback week for Jason! At least that’s what ABC wants us to think. At the beginning of Jason’s first package, Tom’s voice-over said, ”Former favorite Jason plummeted down the leader board,” complete with an animated graphic of just how far Jason had fallen that one week. The judges’ adoration of Mr. NFL came back in full force tonight. For the quickstep, Edyta’s choreography relied heavily on gimmicks, like Jason leaping (seen it), Jason tossing a prop stack of papers into a non-breeze to the delight of the judges (wow?), and Jason falling onto Edyta horizontally after performing a handstand (this was admittedly impressive and also hot). My favorite sequence, though, involved Jason’s solo high kick and Jason’s smiley jazz hands. All of this ”posing” — a habit that fellow choice cut of beef DANCMSTR can certainly relate to — distracted from the way Jason and Edyta’s footwork wasn’t quite matching up throughout the dance. Oh, well — he got a ”Tehhhhhn!” anyway. Two of ‘em. Later, Edyta, who suffered a mental lapse this week and thinks it’s still midway through season 5, took Jason on a magic capelet ride through a paso doble set to the Monday Night Football theme song. I’m sure a lot of people will complain about how this paso was just like Edyta and Cameron Mathison’s ”Superman” one, right down to Jason’s knee walk and right-on-the-beat dramatic poses. Yes, it was a total joke, but at least I chuckled. Well, on the inside, I chuckled. On the surface, I just gaped.